From Potboiler to Promising

I don’t have much profound to say today, as I’ve been feeling unwell all week– first with a mild cold, and now with a hovering migraine, which I am staving off as best I can with coffee and Tylenol and darkness. I am in quite a bit of pain, actually! So please forgive any typos. This week, I managed to crack the 20,000-word mark in my YA novel and do a fair amount of research for what comes next; write two poems; revise the query letter for my first novel; and read submissions for poetry journal One (through Jacar Press). I intend to close out the week today and tomorrow with a few submissions of my own. I expect some rejections any minute now which will free up more work for me to send elsewhere. (That’s how rejection works, in case you didn’t know!– Each rejection is an opportunity to send work to a journal that might provide a better home for it than the last one would have. So remember that.)

I wanted to take a moment to talk about the importance of having other people– people you trust, who will also be honest with you– read your work. Even if you are already a famous, award-winning writer, for some reason reading my humble blog post right now instead of working on your next great masterpiece, this is true. Everyone has a different level of experience and a different perspective to offer, so guess what– even the opinions of friends and family who aren’t experienced writers themselves can tell you if your work communicates the message you intend it to. You will learn, with experience, what sort of critique is helpful to you, and what isn’t. When you try something someone suggests to you, if you end up not liking the change, you can always change back. Often, other people can see things that you can’t, simply because you can be too close to your own work.

I finished a literary fiction novel last year, and had sent it around a few places, but have been trying to find a publisher in earnest only the last four or five months. I have a 50% “success” rate with agents, by which I mean that my query letter 50% of the time has triggered a request from an agent to see the full manuscript. I gave up on agents fairly quickly, however, because I realized early on that the story does not have mainstream appeal, though the writing style itself is good (and this has also been what the agents I dealt with have told me). Though sales are always nice, of course!, I am predominantly interested in craft and expression with this book. I have opted to try to find a small press instead, one that specializes in this type of novel (literary fiction with elements of suspense / noir and wilderness / survival), and is perhaps less driven by factors affecting the mainstream market. The protagonist of the book is an elderly, chronically ill woman, someone who would traditionally be ignored by society. When her husband is murdered, she must defend her property from poachers on her own. She is an unreliable narrator and often doesn’t do what she “should.” She is a character who is trying to adjust to life changes, trying to survive, and sometimes makes bad choices in an effort to do so.

I hadn’t allotted the book a great deal of importance, aside from personal significance, I suppose because I wrote it mostly for myself, and it is my first novel, so I very much wanted to have realistic expectations. (For the record, I’ve often felt I would be more successful if I had a bigger ego– I’m just not sure how to go about nurturing one.) But when I told my talented editor friend about the book, and he asked to see the synopsis, he pointed out that it deals with important issues such as isolation and care of the elderly and chronically ill; it has a subversive aspect in that the female character successfully takes her husband’s place; it has a concern for the environment and the treatment of animals. “These are the elements you should be marketing,” he told me.

And magically, a light went on. My perspective changed. These are the wonderful moments as a human being, I think, when the world shifts around you, not because the world itself has changed, but because your viewpoint has. This is why the risk of showing your work to someone you respect, making yourself vulnerable, is often worth it. Suddenly, I understood that my little book had more weight than what I myself had been giving it. The issues I had cared about when actually writing it had shone through. I remembered why I had written it in the first place. Sometimes we get so involved in the business of our own lives, we forget ourselves.

I have revised my query letter accordingly, and it is ready to send to several small presses I have my eye on that are opening January 1st. Many thanks to my friend, who took the time, despite having a busy week of his own, to look at my work. I will keep everyone posted with the results.